12 Days of Christmas Stories 2019 – Day 5

Being Kind.

My cousin emailed me today and shared a quote that was impactful in her life and now in mine:

“If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.“ – Fred Rogers

We met a weld instructor from a tech school as we toured with them on site at a customer. His students were taking the weld test and hoping to pass but very aware of how difficult the test was. One student in particular was on the instructor’s mind and unfortunately he didn’t pass the test. The instructor got in touch with us to see if we could assist with Josh getting his foot in the door. Two weeks later, school wrapped up for Josh and we were getting him set up for a metal finishing job at the same facility – a stepping stone. He was excited and nervous, what a big change ahead of him wrapping up school and moving from up north towards the cities. The instructor continued to stay in touch as much as he could behind the scenes. It was evident to us that he cared. He wanted to do whatever he could, within reason, to ensure Josh’s success. He described Josh as a hard working employee that was very committed – he said if Josh could get through the initial training period, he’d be a lifer of an employee! He knew that Josh didn’t pick up things quickly but with a patient teacher and demonstrated instructions and practice he’d be successful. The transformation was incredible – he went from a struggling new hire to a thriving employee on his shift, each time we coached him or his manager did he took it in stride and would work hard to improve! When it came hiring time, there were others very qualified – but Josh was selected. We’re confident it was because of his quality work, commitment to the job and team, and his constant desire to learn and improve! You might be thinking this is a cool story because Josh probably doesn’t know the impact of his teacher –and you’d be right. But it’s also pretty cool, because I don’t think Josh realizes the impact he had on his recruiter 🙂

Throughout this story there are endless opportunities to edit it – we didn’t have to meet with him, we could have ignored the coaching opportunities, we could have not called the instructor back. But we didn’t. We cared, and it wasn’t something we thought about doing– it was something we DID. We were kind.

Every single interaction we have is an opportunity to show kindness, bless someone else, and to do the work. That’s pretty powerful; are you using that power wisely?